Lofty Expectations: Summer To-Do List for ‘10
At the start of summer every year, I like to kick off the celebration of no schoolwork and limited obligations with something that has practically become ritualistic for me: compiling a summer to-do list with so many things on it that it is implausible and unfeasible to accomplish all of them. It’s not some sort of optimistic gesture where I think, “Oh, I’ll just add way too many things and that will push me to finish/accomplish at least a handsome percentage of the them,” but more due to something I have termed the “Spring Break Fallacy.” It is the exaggerated perception of time that one gets at the beginning of any school break, wherein three months seems like a year, one month seems like six, and one week seems like three months. It is dangerous only insofar as “biting off more than you can chew” in terms of goals and expectations. And it happens to me EVERY school break.
Of course, me writing about it right now shows that I recognize and acknowledge this, so from now on I will purposefully give myself unrealistic goals that I have no means of completing in such a short time. Hence, this post, where I can publicly release my expectations for the summer and then come back and laugh at them in the fall when I realize I didn’t accomplish anything. Actually, – and you should know this if you’ve been listening to my podcast recently – originally I was supposed to be in China all summer, but in the end that plan fell through. This was mainly because a) most of the other people going on the trip I didn’t know or didn’t get along with, and b) calculating in the rent for my stateside apartment, the cost of the trip would be in excess of $10,000, money I do not have and would rather put toward a semester in college. The only reason I am heartbroken about this is that, in the midst of dilly-dallying with the logistics and paperwork for this trip, I missed a much more rare opportunity to travel to China on a separate trip this summer with one of my favorite professors and some really good friends from Point for a significantly smaller amount of money. One of my mottos in life is “no regrets,” but I can’t help but sigh when thinking of missing out on this for something else that didn’t even work out anyway.
Regardless, this summer still holds some interesting possibilities, and I think it will be better than last summer now that I’ve moved from working at a video store to working for a professional television station. It’s a better prospect given that my work in television affords me the luxury of not having to deal with irritating, annoying customers and offers dynamic, interesting work, as opposed to the video store, where I was doing the exact same thing every day I worked. This also means I can get my nights back, since working at a video rental store automatically entails working night shifts almost exclusively. You can probably guess that business isn’t booming for video rental at one in the afternoon, aside from little kids renting Halo when they should be outside amusing themselves. At least, that’s what my friends and I did back in “the day.” Oh, how the times have changed!
Anyway, enough rambling, here is my to-do list for this summer (sadly, this probably isn’t even comprehensive):
- Three Months, Three Films – Making three films (one film per month) with my friends to make up for our lack of activity on the film front for the past few years. So far, we’re trying to make a sequel to our action film from 2007 as well as that romantic comedy we never made last year.
- Mandarin practice – Over winter break, I didn’t do any language practice, and I was rusty at the beginning of second semester Chinese. Some self-study is called for over the next three months, be it learning dirty words, embarrassing myself by talking in Mandarin on the internet, or just listening to Pimsleur and practicing 写汉字.
- Summer classes! I finally decided to do something academically productive over the summer and signed up for some distance learning courses through UW-Eau Claire, since they are substantially cheaper than most of the other UW institutions I looked at. I’m learning about international politics in June and microeconomics in July.
- Writing and performing music – I’m always writing music, regardless of the season, so that will continue. Hopefully Central Plaza will release some more singles or perhaps an EP before summer’s end. Apparently I’ve also been conscripted into playing keys for my dad’s new cover band.
- Podcasting and writing blog posts on the regular. Auspicious Objects often gets neglected (the last post on here was written months ago), which is sad, since I do enjoy writing, but rarely have the time or motivation to do so during the school year. Therefore, I would like to see to it that this site gets a healthy amount of posts over the summer and into the fall. Stationary Joystick and possibly The Gentlemen’s Agreement will have a steady output of episodes as well, I hope. I’m too much of a closet narcissist for them not to.
- Journey to New York, D.C., and Maryland. Heading out to hook up with some friends I made this year at school, and of course Jackie of Twinkie Beyond fame and Aaron of Three Guys Walk Into a Bar fame.
- Journey to Stevens Point. Naturally, an adventure (perhaps more than one) to Stevens Point is pretty much mandatory, to hook up with the old crew and get my fill of local favorites, those being Belt’s ice cream, Green Tea Chinese cuisine, Gyro House gyros, and Wooden Spoon sandwiches.
- Reading a lot of books and watching a lot of films. My newfound appreciation for university interlibrary loaning has opened up an entire new world of books to read for free (!), and I plan to make good use of my Netflix membership this summer as well.
…That’s what I’ve got right now. Looking at it, perhaps it’s not so much, though finishing three films will be an interesting challenge. What do you, my three readers, have on the docket for this summer?
